A couple of years ago, a woman emailed a Christian Science practitioner saying she’d returned home from a few days away to find that a loved parakeet had somehow broken its leg. She had taken the bird to a veterinarian, but he had told her the tiny leg couldn’t be set.
In a phone conversation a day later, the practitioner learned that the woman had a number of parakeets, as well as several lovebirds and an adopted macaw. Clearly these dear birds were an important part of this woman’s life. While the two were on the phone, the practitioner asked the parakeet’s name, but the woman replied that with the exception of the adopted macaw (named by its previous family), none of her birds had names.
Now, of course, a name is not in itself someone’s identity. One might, however, think of it as representing the importance and value of the distinct individuality bestowed by divine Love on each of its precious, deeply loved ideas. The practitioner read the caller this statement from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “Spirit names and blesses all. Without natures particularly defined, objects and subjects would be obscure, and creation would be full of nameless offspring,—wanderers from the parent Mind, strangers in a tangled wilderness” (p. 507).
